With
the deadliest school shooting spree in U.S. history at Virginia Tech
in Blacksburg has come predictable calls for mental health screening
and mandatory intervention—a debate that has actually been going on
for some 20 years.

As
early as 1985, well before the current level of school violence, some
educators were piloting psychological assessments, interspersing personal,
opinion-oriented questions among legitimate academic fare. Pennsylvania’s
Educational Quality Assessment, for example, asked children as young
as eight to answer a large number of what-would-you-do-if questions
and to complete word-association-type exercises that smacked of sophisticated,
clinical personality inventories. The Interpretive Literature explaining
the tests (when one could get hold of it) detailed what was being
assessed: the child’s “locus of control,” whether a child was “externally
or internally motivated,” a student’s “amenability to change,” plus
a willingness to “conform to group goals” and “receive stimuli.” Another
quasi-academic test, the Testing Essential Learning and Literary Skills
exam, indicated in the Foreword to fellow professionals that the purpose
was to sniff out “indicators of gullibility,” with a caveat further
on that the test “also appears to measure knowledge to some extent.”

States
like Nebraska and Michigan were not far behind, and by the 1990s,
nearly all schools were incorporating psychological surveys, especially
into their “health” programs.

Eventually,
the term “loner” became synonymous with “quirky,” then linked to “sociopathy.”
The person who thought for him (or her) self instead of basing actions
on the peer group was considered out-of-step. This represented a 180-degree
turnabout from the World War I and II generation, an era when nearly
every family owned a gun and youngsters were taught to stand up to
bullies on the playground instead of negotiating a peace.

Today,
everyone from talk show hosts to President George W. Bush and the
National Education Association is banking on psychiatric diagnoses
to identify, label and treat eccentric behavior before it turns deadly—which
is kind of strange in light of sadistic video games, pornographic
magazines and how-to bomb-making literature, all easily available
to any pedophile, terrorist or nut-case. And then there’s the self-esteem
issue, which, if too low, supposedly turns kids into criminals, while
other authorities insist it is high self-esteem that results in children
becoming delinquents. Mental health gurus can’t seem to agree whether
most psychopaths and sociopaths have low, or high, opinions of themselves,
in any case.

And
therein lies the problem with mental health screening, psychotropic
drugging, counseling and therapy, involuntary commitment—and behavioral
science in general. Put 100 psychiatrists in a room and 50 will say
screening instruments and mandatory psychotropic drugging are the
answer to public safety and the other 50 will claim that the potential
for harm outweighs any benefit (think Columbine killers on Luvox,
and Andrea Yates drowning her five children after imbibing a prescribed
cocktail of antipsychotics and antidepressants). Most psychologists
already agree that young Americans are excessively self-focused—not
a particularly encouraging side-effect of today’s non-stop emotional
temperature-taking.

Much
as we’d like a magic bullet—better make that “magic diagnosis” or
“magic pill”—the behavioral sciences simply don’t have the track record
to support prediction or prevention strategies. We’re not there yet.
We know only enough to get into trouble. Psychological profiling has
a way of coming back to bite us (think airport security). Psychological
screening: We wind up tracking and monitoring innocents. Involuntary
commitment schemes turn nations into political gulags.

Given
our computerized, high-tech society, should we expect better today?
Don’t we have quite enough political correctness already, no matter
which side tries to use it? Do we really want to homogenize thought—because
that’s really what it comes down to once “experts” start deciding
which thoughts are acceptable and which ones are not.

Americans
need to stop fixating on so-far unproven theories about chemical imbalances
in the brain and trendy mental health labels (attention-deficit disorder,
obsessive-compulsive disorder, hyperactivity, oppositional-defiant
disorder, etc.) and decide instead just how much it is willing to
put up with in the way of out-of-control behavior. The bottom line
is that too many kids are running amok—at ever younger ages—and too
many violent offenders, who have already demonstrated their intentions,
are being returned to the streets.

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It
is average Americans, not “experts,” who must draw a line as to what
they will tolerate. Until that happens, all the psychologists, medications,
counseling services, and screening instruments in the world will not
be enough to prevent the “mad” rampages that increasingly define our
era.

It
is average Americans, not “experts,” who must draw a line as to what they
will tolerate. Until that happens, all the psychologists, medications,
counseling services, and screening instruments in the world will not be
enough to prevent the “mad” rampages that increasingly define our era.